promotion of scientific conciseness and completeness at the same time by including comprehensive abstracts rather than imposing strict page limits.

3.

How are efficient distribution and permanent archiving and accessibility of GMD articles achieved by the publisher Copernicus Publications?

GMD and its discussion forum are accessible online and free of charge. Copernicus Publications makes sure that the open-access publications are indexed and archived worldwide in electronic archives, search engines, and databases to guarantee their maximum dissemination and impact.

4.

How are discussion papers and interactive comments archived in GMDD, and are the interactive comments citable?

Discussion papers are archived in GMDD and receive a DOI. The short comments, referee comments, editor comments, and author comments posted in the interactive discussion of the papers also receive their own DOI, which allows citation of every individual interactive comment.

5.

How does GMD ensure the quality of its discussion papers?

First of all, manuscripts with a clear lack of substantial results or with excessive formal deficiencies will be sorted out rigorously in the access review.

Even if a low-quality paper passed the access review and was posted in the discussion forum, its deficiencies would most probably be revealed in the interactive public discussion by the referees and other interested scientists.

The access review is meant to assure the basic scientific and technical quality of the papers posted in GMDD, but the opportunity for an efficient public discussion by all interested members of the scientific community is expected to enhance the actual quality control beyond the limits of the traditional peer review. Even if there are no short comments from the scientific community, a full peer-review process in the traditional sense, albeit in a more transparent way, is still assured before full acceptance and publication of a paper in GMD.

6.

What happens if a manuscript that has been posted as a discussion paper is not accepted for publication as a final paper in GMD? Can the manuscript be removed from GMDD?

Nevertheless, we are aware that the appearance of a paper in GMDD and subsequent non-acceptance into GMD can be inconvenient for authors. In such cases, the authors have the following options to proceed:

Option A

The authors can appeal to the GMD executive editors for review and revision of the editorial decision. In this case, the executive editors will carefully review the decision of the topical editor who originally handled the manuscript. This process will normally involve the original or additional referees and an iteration of manuscript review and revision. An appeal is recommended only if the authors are firmly convinced that the editorial decision not to accept the paper for GMD was clearly erroneous and that their manuscript clearly meets all evaluation criteria for acceptance into GMD.

Option B

The authors can submit a rewritten manuscript for review, discussion, and publication in GMDD and GMD. If the topical editor and/or authors of a manuscript discussed in GMDD conclude that the manuscript can and should be rewritten in a way which goes beyond regular revisions (e.g. addition of substantial new results, etc.), a rewritten manuscript can at any time be submitted for independent review and discussion in GMDD, and final publication in GMD.

Option C

The authors can submit the manuscript to an alternative journal. In many scientific journals, posting in a scientific discussion forum (like GMDD) is considered equivalent to prepublication on a scientific preprint server (like arXiv.org) and is not regarded as a reason for exclusion from (re)submission for fully peer-reviewed publication. We expect that in the long run most if not all scientific journals will adopt this policy. Authors of discussion papers that are not accepted for further review after discussion or where a revised manuscript was not accepted for final journal publication can request a withdrawal if needed for resubmission to another journal. The discussion paper stays online but the reader is notified about the withdrawal.

Normally, even very good manuscripts can be further improved by revision. In the unlikely event that a very good manuscript cannot achieve publication in GMD, a revised and further improved version is very likely to achieve publication in an alternative journal.

Overall, we are confident that the advantages of permanent archiving outweigh the potential disadvantages. For exceptional individual cases in which this policy may be disadvantageous, we regret any potential inconvenience. Nevertheless, we hope that we have the authors' understanding and continued support in the effort to improve scientific communication and quality assurance via interactive open-access publishing.

7.

Where can authors find guidance on data and software deposition, availability, and citation?